Pope LEO XIV’S Visit To African Church Linked TO Slavery Reflects On His Own Heritage
The pope’s planned visit to a Catholic chapel in Angola that was connected to the slave trade is seen as a symbolic moment by some Africans.
The Church of Our Lady of Muxima was built by Portuguese colonizers in Angola at the end of the 16th century as part of a fortress complex and became a hub in the slave trade.
Pope Leo XIV’s planned visit to the church in the town of Muxima on Sunday as part of his Africa tour is in recognition of it becoming a popular Catholic shrine after believers reported an appearance by the Virgin Mary around 1833.
But before that, the white-walled church on the edge of the Kwanza River was a point where enslaved Africans were gathered to be baptized by Portuguese priests before being forced to walk the last 145 kilometers to Angola’s main port of Luanda to be put on ships to the Americas.
More than 5 million people left from Angola on the trans-Atlantic slave route, more than any other country and nearly half of the roughly 12.5 million African slaves sent across the ocean.
It’s unclear if Leo will address slavery on his Africa trip, as St. John Paul II did on papal visits to Cameroon in 1985 and Senegal in 1992.
Rev. Stan Chu Ilo, a Nigerian priest and professor at DePaul University in Chicago, said he has seen evidence that the pontiff is developing connections to Africa by elevating African figures in the church, including with the recent promotion of Monsignor Anthony Ekpo of Nigeria to a high-ranking position at the Vatican.
